The Pope Praises Turkey as a ‘Model of Coexistence’

During the flight that carried him from Istanbul to Beirut on November 30, Pope Leo XIV spoke with two Turkish journalists, answering their questions and offering an overall reflection on the Turkish leg of his apostolic journey. The in-flight meeting allowed the Pontiff to take stock of the days spent in Istanbul and highlight their most significant moments before continuing on to Lebanon, where the visit concluded on December 2nd.

The apostolic journey was organized primarily for ecumenical reasons, as the Pontiff himself recalled, but it also included reflections of a geopolitical nature. In particular, Baris Seçkin of Anadolu Ajansi asked Pope Leo for a comment on Turkey’s role in achieving and maintaining peace in the Middle East and throughout the world.

The Pope explained that his visit to Turkey and Lebanon also aimed to “promote peace throughout the region.” He identified Turkey as a key actor in mediation, noting how the country—with its Muslim majority but also with the presence of various Christian communities and other minority religions—represents a model of coexistence.

“It is an example of what we seek throughout the whole world: beyond religious, ethnic, and cultural differences, people can live in peace,” he stated.

These remarks by Pope Leo, presenting Turkey as a model for the entire world in interreligious coexistence, may leave more than a few observers astonished—such as the analysts of the European Centre for Law & Justice, who on November 25, on the eve of the Pope’s apostolic journey, had published a report precisely on the persecution of Christians in Turkey.

The document analyzes the pervasive persecution and systemic discrimination faced by Christian communities in Turkey. It highlights the historic collapse of the Christian population, which has fallen from roughly 20% in 1915 to less than 0.3% today—an outcome of decades of violence and state policies aimed at creating a homogenous Sunni Turkish-Muslim nation.

“The dramatic demographic collapse of Turkey’s Christian population over the past century,” the report states, “is the result of a deliberate, multilayered policy of elimination,” and it is not merely a problem of the past. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and its multireligious fabric, the Turkish nationalist leadership of 1923 did not aspire to a pluralistic or genuinely secular republic, but rather to a modern, centralized nation-state whose identity was firmly rooted in Turkish ethnicity and Sunni Islam. Although the Turkish Constitution proclaims the Republic to be “democratic, secular, and social” and guarantees freedom of religion and conscience, the system in reality maintains profound institutional favoritism toward Sunni Islam.

This imbalance is clearly represented by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), an entity fully integrated into the public administration and responsible for organizing and financing Sunni worship, with a budget larger than that of several ministries and managing over 85,000 mosques. Its institutionalization ensures that Sunni Islam enjoys systematic advantages over all other faiths, including Christians and Jews, revealing the structural ambiguity of a state that defines itself as secular while effectively imposing a Sunni lifestyle domestically and promoting Turkish Islam abroad.

The report details institutional obstacles such as the persistent refusal to grant churches legal personality, preventing them from owning property or operating autonomously, and administrative interference in foundations and in the elections of religious leaders. Christians also face a hostile sociopolitical environment marked by frequent acts of direct violence and hate speech, along with the systematic expulsion of foreign clergy and converts under vague claims of “national security.”

Among the structural issues, the document also highlights the long-standing denial by Turkish authorities of the Armenian genocide and the closure of historic and fundamental institutions such as the Halki Seminary.

Persecution of the roughly 257,000 Christians remaining in Turkey is an ongoing reality. Recent episodes include the armed attack in January 2024 on the Roman Catholic Church of Santa Maria in Istanbul—claimed by the Islamic State—and a shooting in January 2025 targeting the premises of an association affiliated with a Protestant church, during which the attacker shouted that “infidels will be defeated and driven into hell.”

In addition to such physical threats, foreign Christians—pastors and missionaries—continue to be systematically expelled or banned from the country (at least 132 between 2019 and 2024, for a total of 303 people) under vague accusations of posing a national security threat. Christian communities with a historic presence in the country also face administrative obstruction: examples include the continued closure of the important Halki Seminary since 1971 and the announcement, in September–October 2025, that the historic Greek Orthodox school of Phanar would no longer accept new enrollments.

The November 30 visit also included a moment bound to spark debate: Pope Leo’s tribute at the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic and a historical figure whose reputation in the Christian world is far from spotless. The stop was mandated by protocol—as had been the case for John Paul II and Benedict XVI—but remains nonetheless inappropriate. Atatürk was not only the father of the modern Turkish state; he was also part of the broad historical process that saw the forced eradication of the Christian populations of Anatolia.

Under his leadership, in continuity with the actions of the Young Turks, the Turkish military and political apparatus promoted deportations, systematic killings, and repression against Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, and other historically rooted communities. Priests and bishops were executed, sacred sites destroyed, entire communities erased. The well-documented connections of the Young Turks movement with Masonic circles of the time have further fueled, for decades, a critical reading of Turkey’s nation-building process, perceived by many as radically hostile to the Christian heritage of Asia Minor.

On the geopolitical level, contemporary Turkey—under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—seeks today to assert itself as an autonomous power capable of freeing itself from both the Western orbit and the Russo-Chinese axis. It aspires to become an alternative pole of balance, presenting itself as an indispensable mediator in regional crises and, at the same time, as a reference point for the Sunni world. 

Competition with Saudi Arabia is evident: Ankara aims to appear more coherent, more assertive, and less dependent on Washington, thus proposing itself as a religious and political leader for the entire Sunni universe. Indeed, many Muslims consider Riyadh to be too “submissive” to U.S. interests.

In this context, the narrative of a “Turkey as a model of coexistence” serves Ankara’s objectives well: an image of religious harmony useful for the country’s international projection, yet one that contrasts with documented evidence of Christian marginalization.

It is within this framework that the Pope’s remarks appear—despite their peacemaking intention—as a missed opportunity.